This curious scene is related to a known group of paintings depicting aspects of everyday life and local culture in Bengal— ranging from pilgrimages, royal processions, market scenes and rural landscapes. These genre paintings are remarkable for their blending of Mughal and Company school elements, so much that it is difficult to categorize the works as safely Company style or Provincial Mughal. Commenting on a similar painting from the Chester Beatty Library ( L. Leach, Mughal and other Paintings from the Chester Beatty Library, London, 1995, vol 2, ppl 768-778-9, no.7.103), Linda Leach hypothesizes that the distant panoramas and emphasis on non-royal subjects suggest that the type catered to British taste and that it would appear that British officials were the main patrons of this type of work. However, the minute and infinite details of the painting point to its production in a traditional Mughal miniaturist workshop. Robert Skelton has remarked that the style of this workshop recalls the work of Dip Chand, a Murshidabad artist active in the 1760s known to have completed a group of portrait miniatures for William Fullerton of the East India Company.
The present painting compares to a similar pair of paintings published by Hazlitt, Good and Fox, Indian Painting for British Patrons, 1770-1860, 1991, nos. 3 and 4, and subsequently sold at Christie's New York, 24 October 2022, lots 1103 and 1109. Two smaller scale paintings at the British library (see T. Falk and M. Archer, Indian Miniatures in the India Office Library, London, 1981, pp. 200 and 489, cat. 374 i & ii.), depicting a pilgrimage scene and a rural river landscape are executed in similar style to the present lot as well.